How Asia's largest lakes are being sacrificed to agri-business…
Nur-Sultan, Sunday,
Lake Balkhash is the largest lake in Central Asia. But maybe not for much longer. For just like its more famous cousin, the Aral Sea, it is steadily shrinking in size - victim not so much of “climate change” as manmade change - notably the diversion of its source waters for irrigation.
Lake Balkhash is the largest lake in Central Asia. But maybe not for much longer. For just like its more famous cousin, the Aral Sea, it is steadily shrinking in size - victim not so much of “climate change” as manmade change - notably the diversion of its source waters for irrigation.
At the time of writing, the lake, situated in east-central Kazakhstan, is around six hundred kilometers in length, that’s going from east to west, with a maximum depth of around 25 meters and much of it far shallower. (The average depth is six meters.) Because it is so shallow, the lake’s size varies dramatically anyway fluctuating from around 20 000 square km to 15 000 square km. Yes, every year a lake 5 000 square kilometers in size dries out!
By comparison, the largest lake in the European Union, is Lake Vänern located in southwestern Sweden, with over 222 000 islands and islets. But at 5650 square km it is roughly the same size as the shallow parts of Lake Balkhash that are alternately flooded and then dry out every year.
This kind of drying out, then is quite natural and nothing to worry about. The north banks of Lake Balkhash, whose name originates from the word "balkas" of Tatar, Kazakh and Southern Altai languages which means "tussocks in a swamp”, are high and rocky while the south banks are low and sandy, with wide belts covered with thickets of reeds and numerous small lakes. These low-lying banks are periodically flooded by the waters of the lake and dry out naturally too. But there’s another kind of drying out which is far from natural happening now too. Because draining lakes and inland seas has become something of a habit for industrialising dictatorships.
Apart from perhaps the best known case of the Aral Sea, today almost completely dried out, victim of Stalin’s grandiose irrigation schemes, there is Lake Baikal, the oldest lake in the world, having originally appeared around 25 million years ago, when a fissure opened in the Eurasian continent. Despite having been around for millions of years, it is rapidly disappearing now as a result of being drained by Mongolian power companies that, with help from the World Bank, have been building hydroelectric dams. One such, the Shuren Hydropower Plant, is planned on the Selenga River in northern Mongolia, having been first proposed in 2013 but currently the subject of a World Bank-funded environmental and social impact assessment.
Making matters worse, Mongolia is also planning a giant network of pipelines to transport water from the Orkhon River, one of the Selenga’s tributaries, to supply the miners in the Gobi desert 1,000 km (620 miles) away.
Today, Baikal is still far away from joining the Aral Sea as an “ex-lake”, a lake that used to be there but no longer is. However, such things can happen fast: the Aral, one of the four largest lakes in the world, only really began shrinking in the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects. But by the late 1990s, the Aral Sea was less than 10% of its original size.
But back to Lake Balkhash. If this lake disappears, it will be a disaster not just for the 3.3 million people, a fifth of Kazakhstan’s population, who live in its water basin - but also for one of the world’s most unique ecosystems. Not least, because to the south of Balkhash lies the Saryesik-Atyrau Desert, stretching for around 400 km to the east. At the moment, there are a great number of small lakes, ponds and wetlands in the desert, as well as grasslands, supporting a varied animal and bird population such as black-tailed gazelles and the critically endangered Saiga antelope - which once roamed over the whole of the Eurasian steppe. Finally, making matters even worse, industrial waste from mining and smelting plants has resulted in extensive pollution of the Balkhash lake and catchment area.
All of this helps explain why the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has sounded the alarm over Lake Balkhash. The international body warns that the world’s 15th largest lake is both becoming shallower and more saline, due to evaporation and the extraction of water from two main feeder rivers, the Ili - flowing from the Xinjiang region of China - and the Karatal, to irrigate crops. The Ili on its own provides the great bulk, 70-80%, of the lake’s water.
In January this year, Kazakh and Russian environmentalists held a crisis meeting in a desperate bid to find ways to save the lake. They called for an end to the diversion of the water in the lake’s feeder rivers calling instead for the introduction of water-saving technologies and more efficient methods of irrigating agricultural land, particularly in China.
Water relations between Kazakhstan and China regarding the rational use of transboundary rivers are already regulated by agreements including one from 2001 specifically on the use and protection of shared rivers and one on water quality in 2011. Unfortunately, Kazakhstan’s big brother, the People’s Republic of China, is not bound by any specifics in the agreements and isn't respecting the spirit of them either. But then Kazakhstan itself isn’t a great example.
Its Kapchagay dam, completed in late 1969, is known on its own to have reduced the size of Lake Balkhash by nearly 40 square kilometers, almost as much as the whole of Scotland’s famous Loch Ness and caused it to drop 2.2 metres (7 feet), an all-time low. The hydroelectric project was supposed to provide an abundant water supply and irrigation for arid farming in the region. However, environmentalists have expressed deep concern about its impact upon the lake as desertification already affects one third of the entire basin.
Nonetheless, as Russell Frost, EU project lead for the “Ecological Politics in Kazakhstan” initiative, warns:
The problem is that governments everywhere privilege industrial and farming activity over things like water quality, fishing, and human health. The results can be seen in the elevated content of heavy metals, pesticides, organic compounds, nitrites and sulphites recorded in the lake and its tributaries today. Heavy metals are the most dangerous elements and not only pollute the soil, but during dry periods can be thrown into the air by dust storms and inhaled causing serious illness.
By comparison, the largest lake in the European Union, is Lake Vänern located in southwestern Sweden, with over 222 000 islands and islets. But at 5650 square km it is roughly the same size as the shallow parts of Lake Balkhash that are alternately flooded and then dry out every year.
This kind of drying out, then is quite natural and nothing to worry about. The north banks of Lake Balkhash, whose name originates from the word "balkas" of Tatar, Kazakh and Southern Altai languages which means "tussocks in a swamp”, are high and rocky while the south banks are low and sandy, with wide belts covered with thickets of reeds and numerous small lakes. These low-lying banks are periodically flooded by the waters of the lake and dry out naturally too. But there’s another kind of drying out which is far from natural happening now too. Because draining lakes and inland seas has become something of a habit for industrialising dictatorships.
Apart from perhaps the best known case of the Aral Sea, today almost completely dried out, victim of Stalin’s grandiose irrigation schemes, there is Lake Baikal, the oldest lake in the world, having originally appeared around 25 million years ago, when a fissure opened in the Eurasian continent. Despite having been around for millions of years, it is rapidly disappearing now as a result of being drained by Mongolian power companies that, with help from the World Bank, have been building hydroelectric dams. One such, the Shuren Hydropower Plant, is planned on the Selenga River in northern Mongolia, having been first proposed in 2013 but currently the subject of a World Bank-funded environmental and social impact assessment.
Making matters worse, Mongolia is also planning a giant network of pipelines to transport water from the Orkhon River, one of the Selenga’s tributaries, to supply the miners in the Gobi desert 1,000 km (620 miles) away.
Today, Baikal is still far away from joining the Aral Sea as an “ex-lake”, a lake that used to be there but no longer is. However, such things can happen fast: the Aral, one of the four largest lakes in the world, only really began shrinking in the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects. But by the late 1990s, the Aral Sea was less than 10% of its original size.
But back to Lake Balkhash. If this lake disappears, it will be a disaster not just for the 3.3 million people, a fifth of Kazakhstan’s population, who live in its water basin - but also for one of the world’s most unique ecosystems. Not least, because to the south of Balkhash lies the Saryesik-Atyrau Desert, stretching for around 400 km to the east. At the moment, there are a great number of small lakes, ponds and wetlands in the desert, as well as grasslands, supporting a varied animal and bird population such as black-tailed gazelles and the critically endangered Saiga antelope - which once roamed over the whole of the Eurasian steppe. Finally, making matters even worse, industrial waste from mining and smelting plants has resulted in extensive pollution of the Balkhash lake and catchment area.
All of this helps explain why the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has sounded the alarm over Lake Balkhash. The international body warns that the world’s 15th largest lake is both becoming shallower and more saline, due to evaporation and the extraction of water from two main feeder rivers, the Ili - flowing from the Xinjiang region of China - and the Karatal, to irrigate crops. The Ili on its own provides the great bulk, 70-80%, of the lake’s water.
In January this year, Kazakh and Russian environmentalists held a crisis meeting in a desperate bid to find ways to save the lake. They called for an end to the diversion of the water in the lake’s feeder rivers calling instead for the introduction of water-saving technologies and more efficient methods of irrigating agricultural land, particularly in China.
Water relations between Kazakhstan and China regarding the rational use of transboundary rivers are already regulated by agreements including one from 2001 specifically on the use and protection of shared rivers and one on water quality in 2011. Unfortunately, Kazakhstan’s big brother, the People’s Republic of China, is not bound by any specifics in the agreements and isn't respecting the spirit of them either. But then Kazakhstan itself isn’t a great example.
Its Kapchagay dam, completed in late 1969, is known on its own to have reduced the size of Lake Balkhash by nearly 40 square kilometers, almost as much as the whole of Scotland’s famous Loch Ness and caused it to drop 2.2 metres (7 feet), an all-time low. The hydroelectric project was supposed to provide an abundant water supply and irrigation for arid farming in the region. However, environmentalists have expressed deep concern about its impact upon the lake as desertification already affects one third of the entire basin.
Nonetheless, as Russell Frost, EU project lead for the “Ecological Politics in Kazakhstan” initiative, warns:
"It will be necessary to conduct serious negotiations with the People's Republic of China, because all the springs and rivers that flow into Lake Balkhash, have their upper reaches on the territory of the PRC".
The problem is that governments everywhere privilege industrial and farming activity over things like water quality, fishing, and human health. The results can be seen in the elevated content of heavy metals, pesticides, organic compounds, nitrites and sulphites recorded in the lake and its tributaries today. Heavy metals are the most dangerous elements and not only pollute the soil, but during dry periods can be thrown into the air by dust storms and inhaled causing serious illness.
The situation is now getting so bad that in March last year (2021) Kazakhs, in cities and towns across the country, staged protests accusing their government of allowing the Chinese to outsource their polluting industries onto the territory of Kazakhstan.
Today, Lake Balkhash is still a unique gift of nature to the whole world, as well as rightly the national pride of Kazakhstan. But for how much longer?
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